The price of clean drinking water

Do you ever stop and think where your clean water is coming from? When you turn on a faucet, a water fountain, or the shower, does clean water always come out? What if that wasn’t the case? Chandra Broadwater writes that Tampa Bay gets its drinking water from three places: groundwater, surface water and the desalination plant. In the event that any of these sources run dry, Tampa Bay also has the C.W. Bill Young reservoir which currently holds over 15 billion gallons of water. Read “Water supply reaches full mark” in the April 19th edition of the Times. You can access the article in the e-Edition.

The Bill Young reservoir has had problems recently stemming from cracks found in the cement walls meant to retain the water supply. It is estimated that it will cost $100 billion to fix these cracks, and that would increase the cost of water to $2.50 per 1,000 gallons used by a household. Does that seem like a lot of money to you? What do you pay for a bottle of water from a vending machine? Do some research and find out how much clean water costs in other parts of the United States and in other countries around the world. How cheap or expensive is our water here in Tampa Bay? Report your findings here on the NIE Blog.

About the blog

The NIE Blogging Zone is a great place for teachers, parents and school administrators to share their thoughts about how they are using the Tampa Bay Times in their classrooms and to share thoughts about teaching, classroom management, the school system and education in general. If you have a burning topic to suggest or questions about the NBZ, e-mail jpushkin@tampabay.com